Perception of English Lexical Stress by English, Beijing Dialect, and Guangzhou Cantonese Speakers

This study explored how listeners' L1 dialect affects their weighting of acoustic correlates in perceiving English lexical stress. 20 American English speakers, 20 Beijing dialect speakers, and 20 Guangzhou Cantonese speakers produced nonce disyllabic words. Results showed that the salience hierarchy for the perception of English lexical stress by English listeners were: vowel quality>duration>F0>intensity; Beijing listeners: vowel quality>F0>duration>intensity; Guangzhou listeners: F0>vowel quality>duration>intensity. Stress perception of the Beijing dialect listeners is more similar to that of the native English listeners than Guangzhou listeners. These findings reveal that L1 dialect may transfer to the perception of L2 English stress. Results suggest that explicitly taught of these cues in English class is necessary at the preliminary stage of learning English stress to avoid the effect of L1 dialect.